Sonic the Hedgehog Hacking Contest

From Sonic Retro

The Sonic the Hedgehog Hacking Contest was first started in 2002 by Nayr T'nargh / Ayla as a fun idea to promote creativity and create a more competitive atmosphere to further the hacking movement. The first hacking contest went well, but the second one ended badly and the third one even worse with Nayr disappearing right after all the entries were due. The fourth one Nayr disappeared altogether leaving Verse and JcFerggy to finish out the contest for her. The fifth one promised a cash prize for winning, but Nayr was laid off from her job and has everyone involved on an IOU. The sixth contest's results were published on the 13th of November 2008, the seventh contest's on the 1st of September 2009 and the eighth contest's posted on the 8th of December 2010.

Since 2011, the Sonic Hacking Contest has provided further community involvement by having an interactive contest week before the results are announced, with the main part being that people have the opportunity to vote for a small selection of Community Trophies with the hacks that were available to download to the public. The first two years of the Contest Week were run alongside the Sonic Amateur Games Expo, with later contest weeks occurring outside of SAGE. Since 2013, contest submissions (as opposed to emailing them in) and Contest Week participation is done on a website created by Cinossu which allows full members and above of Sonic Retro and SSRG to vote for the Community Trophies - the same website being used for subsequent contests up to 2017 which allows anyone to access previous entries rather than them becoming inaccessible after that year's contest ends.

The 2017 Hacking Contest radically revamped its entry criteria to address frequent low quality submissions from previous years by introducing a Quality Control Criteria which hacks must meet in order to be submitted, whilst also introducing a separate Hack Expo as part of the Contest Week that allows exposure of hacks to the public whilst not having them judged by anyone whatsoever.

Prizes

The Annual Contest offers a variety of prizes to the best hacks presented, not only focusing in the all-around quality. Along with the classic best hack there are also trophies for every singular aspect in a ROM hack.

The 8th annual contest started on December 15th, 2009 and ended on August 5th 2010. The category system that was used in the first and second contests returned for a short time, but was ultimately rejected by popular opinion.

The 9th annual contest started on December 12th, 2010 and is scheduled to end on July 23rd, 2011. The trophies on offer were cleaned up, with some being added, merged or removed. In addition, the community will have a chance to take part by voting for hacks in a Contest Week, which will determine the new "Community Trophies".

Community Trophies

These trophies were allocated through voting made during SAGE 2011 on the Hacking Contest website. Only hacks that were listed as public were able to be downloaded and judged, with other hacks being exempt from the Community Trophies.

Community Trophies

These trophies were allocated through voting made during SAGE 2012 on the Hacking Contest website. Only hacks that were listed as public were able to be downloaded and judged, with other hacks being exempt from the Community Trophies. Hacks are available to download on the SSRG Repository.

The Fourteenth Annual Contest was held from November 7 to November 13, 2016.

This contest was plagued by low-quality entries, and the judges felt the need to give null votes to some trophies and reinstate the previously retired Big the Cat trophy for the worst entry. This spurred the addition of a quality control check in the 2017 hacking contest.

Judged Trophies

These trophies were allocated by the judges, which were Spanner, Ayla, Cinossu, D.A. Garden, SuperEgg, LazloPsylus, SSF1991 (Donnie), Shannon, amphobius (DalekSam) and Clownacy.

The Fifteenth Annual Contest was held from November 20 to November 26, 2017.

After a disappointing showcase in 2016, a quality control check was spurred for the contest, and for the first time in Hacking Contest history a hack expo was added. This resulted in a great success and a massive improvement over last year's contest.